


semi-automatic

by Pyroluminescence



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood and Gore, Canon Universe, Canonical Character Death, Dissociation, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Mental Instability, Morally Ambiguous Character, Murder, Non-Consensual Kissing, of Akechi not Ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 17:42:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14919960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyroluminescence/pseuds/Pyroluminescence
Summary: He enjoyed this, but he didn't enjoy that he had to enjoy it.





	semi-automatic

**Author's Note:**

> Getting through doing a job you hate and adapting to doing things that suck is something we can all relate to, but this case is a lot more complicated.

So, he'd kissed a corpse.

It had begun normally enough - with murder.  _BOOM, headshot!_

The .32 round penetrated into Amamiya's skull with little fanfare - at least, as far as these things went. The trajectory had been intended to go towards his brainstem, but the added length of the silencer and awkward handle through leather gloves had thrown Akechi's angle off, and it instead careened out the other side of his cranium in nearly the same instant it had been fired into his frontal lobe.

Fucking silencers. What was this, a movie?

He'd learned not to argue with orders, but still resented using something that did nothing to supress the very loud blast of gunfire, but did everything to throw him off and make his shot sound like a struggling flatus. Even so...

Akechi's smile softened for a moment to observe the spray of blood from the exit wound, complementing the singe of gunpowder burning his nostrils and begging the question, for just a fraction of a moment, of how a Venn diagram overlapping "mouth breathers" and "hitmen" would be composed.

His eyes, however, were focused on Amamiya's face, the widening of his target's - his friend's - eyes and unmistakable shock of pain twisting his neutral expression.

The moment Akechi drew back his weapon, Amamiya fell forward, with a decidedly wet splat resounding when his face hit the table. Along with it, an even wetter splatter of blood, individual splotches and sprays becoming quickly devored by the growing amounts of dark liquid pooling under his head.

That certainly wasn't a good prognosis, was it? Akechi's lips parted slightly, eyes focusing on the almost invisible entry wound. Singed over by burnt-to-shit pieces of Amamiya's dark hair, he had to use the tip of the silencer to adjust his hair so he could see where his touch bore death into Ren Amamiya.

Well, maybe he wasn't technically  _dead_ just yet. Who knew? A small chuckle escaped his lips and he realized he was grinning, unable to help himself but to nudge Amamiya's head with his weapon, as though taunting him.

Though he was very aware of the ringing in his ears and the acrid sting of gunpowder in his nostrils, he was less doing any of this than he was watching it happen, as though he'd put his body on autopilot to observe. He wasn't cold and calculating - he enjoyed it! He had to! Yet, he felt removed, if anything, dissociating into a state where he was and wasn't there, limbic primal  _predator_ safe from what he'd done.

Semi-automatic. That's what he was.

It was even more removed from himself, that he would lift Amamiya's chin with his right fingers, unable to feel his body heat through his gloves. But then he felt it on his lips when they caught Amamiya's. Warm. Soft. Unresponsive. Everything he should expect from kissing a corpse. Amamiya tasted like he had smelled in life, at a time where now the only way he smelled was  _blood._

The sensation of Amamiya's lips under his continued ghosting his mouth with warm tingling, completely unlike the violent numbness that lived pulsing just under his face. Akechi's expression adopted a neutral smile while unscrewing the silencer from the barrel, the grip of his gloves making quick with the task.

Fingers, he found, were a lot easier to manipulate when the person who had them wasn't a corpse, and when his own  _weren't_ limited by gloves. It was with another maddening pulse, ice-cold shock that removed him further into himself, that his hands twitched with the urge and the rage to fire the rest of the magazine into Amamiya, maybe into himself, just  _fucking ruin everything_ because it was hard to fit his target's dead fingers around the pistol that had killed him.

In reality, he was sure that it took a matter of seconds to successfully fit the pistol in Amamiya's right hand. Knowing this did not scratch the glass wall between Akechi and his body, the violent ringing in his ears, and the dissociative  _fury_ that was easier - often impossible - just to give into.

He couldn't think too much, or he'd end up with a hole in his head. Ha!

Stepping back to observe, he noted that the crime scene was utterly unconvincing as a murder-suicide in almost every aspect, and Akechi wondered, taking a moment longer to look from the still body of their guard to Amamiya's twitching carcass, if he was just  _testing_ how much he could get away with under the thick cover Shido gave him. They knew he was a messy assassin.

The silencer - and  _really,_ damn the stupid thing - slipped easily inside his jacket, and with the same ease, wearing a pleasant smile of silent farewell to his friend, Akechi didn't look back after the door handle clicked shut behind him.

He enjoyed this, but he didn't enjoy that he had to enjoy it.

He was following orders! It was nothing personal! He had no choice! - but he could never just  _tell himself_ he was coerced and powerless, so  _of course_ he was just a violent psychopath and  _of course_  killing was normal.

_But he'd kissed him!_ He'd never kissed a  _corpse_ before and he hated that he kissed him and loved that he hated it because he wanted to ruin himself more than he wanted to kill Amamiya he loved that he loved it he loved hating himself  _it felt so much like having control._

How unprofessional.

By the time his footsteps finished echoing in the empty halls and he found himself dialing Shido, the whole event had become safely underwater, somewhere he couldn't quite reach it, flickering like film stills, as though it were something he watched with the same distance as he would a news report on his phone, and something that hadn't really happened to him.

Akechi never looked back, but the sick sensation of his lips on Amamiya's would twist his stomach and shiver delightfully down his back for what remained of his life.


End file.
